


Subversion

by nuclearchinchilla



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 05:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12227109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearchinchilla/pseuds/nuclearchinchilla
Summary: They're not each other's soulmates.Somehow, it all works out.





	Subversion

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of inspired by alpha/beta/omega dynamics, I guess?

Soulmates is the euphemistic term for it. The love at first sight which poet johnnies and Bingo Little keep going on about- it just doesn't really happen, of course. But lust does happen- pure, unbridled passion. And that's the jolt you get when you find your so-called soulmate, a jolt that can be found with no one else. Everyone is born with a unique birthmark of an intricate symbol on their left shoulder, and the birthmark of their soulmate would eventually appear on the back of their right hand. Of course, the actual love then develops over the months and years, and it's all the soppy novels and moving pictures would ever talk about. 

Sometimes, Jeeves does wonder if he could have done things differently. They're happy now of course, and safe, but he does wonder if they could do with fewer skeletons in the closet. Still, nothing could have been done. When he had showed up on the doorstep of 6A Berkeley Mansions, their marks didn't appear on each other's hands. They didn't feel the jolt. Some things happen, and some things just don't.

They started with their chasms- Jeeves haughty despite his good intentions, Bertie petulant despite his kindness. But then those chasms started to narrow, and close. The rifts in the lute mended. Bertie had always admired his 'paragon' of course, and gushed about the man's many accomplishments like nobody's business, but then it became even more than that. Jeeves realized he could break fewer eggs to make an omelette, that it isn't entirely about the end results. It's about Bertie's emotions, about Bertie's dignity, about the fact that Bertie deserves to know Jeeves' plans ahead of time, to at least know when he was going to have to play the fool. Jeeves doesn't know when exactly he realizes this, but he does. Bertie stopped telling Jeeves to save his life stories for 'the long winter nights' and insisted on hearing them now right now, so Jeeves gradually stopped refusing his invitations to nightly festivities and fireplace embraces.

Somehow, along the way, that lack of the jolt just stopped mattering.

Then Bertie's mark appeared on some woman's hand and her mark appeared on his.

It's never turned out that way, of course. All of Bertie's former fiancees simply had to resort to insisting that Bertie was their soulmate, it's just that their marks wouldn't appear 'properly' on their skin. But this was different. Destiny had made its decree, and there didn't seem to be a way out of that.

He felt the sensual jolt for her, but he didn't love her. He knew as much- that nothing, not this fleeting instance of hormones and strange markings and even Fate itself, could replace the years and years of two lives entwined since Jeeves had shimmered into his apartment. All the Drones just rolled their eyes when he said he felt not the romantic pash for her, and told him 'oh what do you expect' and 'of course that comes later'.

But he didn't want 'that' to come for him. He imagined 'that' as some menacing spectre, rushing up to bean him with a china basin full of beans. He didn't want to fall in love with her- it just seemed a little redundant when he was already in love with Jeeves.

He tried to act the part of a gentleman of course- there's the Code and all that- but somehow he managed to stumble into a brief falling out with her anyway. She biffed off to Italy and sent him a telegram demanding he come rushing for her with melodramatic apologies, a la moving pictures.

On the same day, Jeeves departed for St Petersburg, where there was a prospective employer in need of his services.

When Bertie rushed to the railway station, he looked up the schedule, and it took him half a heartbeat to make his decision.

There was the angry telegrams and phone calls along the entire journey of course. There was the what-the-helling, and the 'why are you not here yet', and 'what do you mean russia, I'm in italy', and 'what in the bally dickens is there in russia'.

"Jeeves", Bertie had sent the reply. There was Jeeves. "Jeeves is there, so I'm going there." It felt so natural to say that, like something that just plain didn't need further explanation.

"Dashed rummy, this whole soulmate wheeze," Bertie confided all to Jeeves in St Peterburg while swaddled in many layers of woolly blankets. He had packed not nearly enough warm clothing for the trip. He couldn't help but feel that the next time the love of his life was going to biff off so unceremoniously, could the man not choose more agreeable climes?

Jeeves just gave him one of those absolutely mood-lifting almost-smiles, indeed-sirred the gentleman and then conjured up a warm whiskey-and-tea.

"Ever had a soulmate, Jeeves?" Bertie asked as he sipped on the much appreciated beverage. The man was a marvel really- the way he managed to establish an almost-usual routine in this hotel room, just slightly adjusted to compensate for the chilly climate. Jeeves lent a comforting sort of familiarity to everything, and made life feel so simple.

"I've always been markless, sir," Jeeves replied. Jeeves sticks to the 'sir's in the daytime, but Bertie doesn't mind it, because there's a lilting, tender quality present only in the 'sir's addressed to him, so it's almost as if Jeeves had said 'Bertram' anyway.

It's a lie however, for Jeeves to have asserted that he never had encountered his soulmate. But it's a lie he had to tell. The man decided he couldn't exactly tell Bertie- or anyone at all- what he had done to his woman. He couldn't tell anyone that, by the time he had met her, he had already fallen into his life with Bertie, and he'd sooner give up the world than to give up, well, whatever it is that they had together. He knew he had to marry her- the societal pressure to do so was great. So he had taken her to go enjoy the country air, and as night fell upon the inn, he convinced her into a hike into the forest, a short while before the forecasted storm blew in. Before she knew it, there was a dull thunk as an object crashed into the back of her head, and she fell into an early grave. No one searched the forest, for she had instead, ostensibly, left a message at the inn that she was going for a swim. So it was assumed she was swept away by the waves during the storm, only that a search of the seas turned up nothing. His right hand, of course, he got tattooed over to look markless, ostensibly out of grief.

"Do something about her, Jeeves," Bertie pleaded, referring to his own so-called soulmate, "please think up something with that fish-fed brain of yours. The young master is in need of salvation."

Jeeves decided he would, indeed, do something about it. 


End file.
